ART AND POLITICS; Face Time in Barcelona

By DANIEL E. SLOTNIK

Published: November 1, 2008

The grandest representation of Europe's obsession with Senator Barack Obama to date is a colossal portrait of his face being made in Barcelona, using hundreds of tons of gravel and sand.

Mr. Obama's gritty visage, titled ''Expectation,'' will cover almost 2.5 acres of the city's beachfront when it is completed. The goal is to make it so large that it can be seen on Google Earth.

The artist, Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada, a 42-year-old Cuban-American who lives in Barcelona, made it clear that while he supported an Obama presidency he did not intend the image solely as a tribute to the candidate. Mr. Rodriquez-Gerada said he was making the portrait so large ''to reflect on why the world needs heroes,'' and was using sand and gravel to show the ephemeral nature of hope and heroism.

He said he settled on Barcelona to show the worldwide importance of the United States' election and interconnectedness of the world. Mr. Rodriguez-Gerada said that contributions for his project came from many sources, including the City of Barcelona, but that the Democratic Party was not one of them.

On Sunday, Mr. Rodriguez-Gerada will enlist the help of up to 40 volunteers using rakes and shovels, ''a very large bulldozer, a very large all-terrain dump truck, and a special truck with a forklift on the front'' to finish pushing the sand and gravel into place.

Mr. Rodriguez-Gerada said the portrait would be visible on Google Earth as soon as traffic controllers from El Prat, Barcelona's airport, cleared the Institute of Cartography of Catalonia to fly over the beach and take the picture.DANIEL E. SLOTNIK